


sooner than later

by satellites (brella)



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:05:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's four in the morning when he gets the call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sooner than later

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sarcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcat/gifts).



> 12 Days of Ficmas: Day Four.   
> sarcat requested: Wally/Artemis, peppermint; OR: Wally decides to give Bart a chance and they bond

Wally spills a bottle of Artemis’s perfume on the morning of March 30. It’s peppermint, the kind she only wears during the holidays when she feels like buying into the gimmick (as she puts it), and he hasn’t smelled it since Christmas.  
  
He’s trying to find the antiseptic because he cut himself shaving  _again_ , and he accidentally knocks the tiny glass flask off of the dresser, and it shatters, its contents splattering onto the carpet. He tries to scrub it out, but cleaning has never been his favorite thing, so in the end, he leaves it, and the whole room smells like her, and it smells like winter, and Nelson finds the spot where the stain is and lays down on it and doesn’t move no matter how much Wally tries to coax him out before he leaves for classes.  
  
It stings his nostrils, and it bites, relentless, like a blizzard. He pulls the blanket from the closet over his head when he goes to sleep that night, the couch conforming to his cramped-in shape, and the scent comes in from under the closed door to the bedroom, knotted at the tip of his tongue.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s four in the morning when he gets the call. His cell phone buzzes on the coffee table and startles Nelson into barking. His hand flings out to press the answer button before he’s even opened his eyes.  
  
“Yeah?” he mumbles, running a hand through his unkempt hair and kicking the blanket back over his feet.  
  
“Wally.” It’s Dick. Wally’s stomach drops, just on instinct, just on the chance that the peppermint will be all he has left, and he sits up.  
  
“ _Yeah_?” he reiterates, and his voice is lower than he remembers, heavier.  
  
“We found them,” Dick says, all in one exhale that rattles the receiver. “Jaime, Gar, La’gaan, Bart – they’re home.”  
  
His stomach is heading up again. He throws the blanket off of his knees and stands, and Nelson watches him with wide brown eyes, his chin tilting.  
  
“Are they okay?” Wally demands, his lips shaking upwards into the first smile he’s had in weeks. “The – the little twerp; is he—?”  
  
“He’s fine.” Dick sort of half-laughs it. “They all are. It’s – it’s a long story, man; we saved some other captives and we’re getting them squared away, sending them home...”  
  
“That’s – that’s great, Dick,” Wally breathes, scrubbing his face with his free hand. “Where... uh, what’s the situation? Right now.”  
  
“We’re at the Hall for debriefing. I’ve got a video debrief of my own with Atom in an hour and a half, but Jaime’s family just arrived to get him and everyone else is going home...”  
  
“Is he still there?” Wally blurts out, astounded at the genuine hope coursing through his chest. “Or, no, I guess Jay and Joan are alread—”  
  
“Bart’s here,” Dick cuts him off. “The Garricks couldn’t be reached; we assumed they were asleep. He’s last on our debrief list, since he kind of...  _deviated_ , during mission, so he’ll be here a while.”  
  
“I’m coming over,” Wally says, already at the coat rack and shouldering his jacket on, already half-stumbling into his shoes on one leg. “I can take him for the night if Jay and Joan aren’t around; it’s no problem.”  
  
Dick lets out an amused and obnoxiously satisfied giggle that makes Wally’s chest clench up from an inexplicable, aching nostalgia. A car goes by outside and the yellow from its headlights slides across the ceiling; Nelson watches the shapes go by with fascination.  
  
“I called it,” Dick snickers. “I knew you’d get attached to him sooner or later.”  
  
“Don’t act like you’ve just won something,” Wally grumbles, poorly masking his weary smile even in his voice. “It’s – family obligations. Y’know. Standard stuff. First cousin once-removed. Even I have duties.”  
  
“I thought the operative word in this equation was  _removed_ ,” Dick says slyly, and Wally rolls his eyes and hangs up.  
  
The nearest zeta tube is in San Francisco and it takes him a minute and a half to run there. It’s the fastest he’s gone since he’d sprinted until his legs had burned, a month ago, just to try to outrun his infuriating cousin from the future – just to try to be better.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Wally, it’s not your fault,” Bart had yelled over the sound of the rain, standing drenched on the doorstep of the apartment Wally had to himself now. “It’s mine. I changed the future with gramps, and now Artemis is—”  
  
“Bart,” Wally had snarled back at him, every inch of him stinging from the last trace of Artemis left on him in Blüdhaven, now gone stale. “I don’t  _fucking_  care. Don’t ever come here again.”  
  
He had slammed the door and lightning had flashed and in the quarter of a second it took him to realize he had made a mistake, Bart had blindly run all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The Hall of Justice is quieter than he remembers. The last time he’d come striding in through the zeta tubes, the silence had deafened him, shaking around Dick’s every guilty pore. ( _It was just a place._ )  
  
The library is empty, so he walks to the entrance door (and he doesn’t remember sprinting through it five years ago in a hazy training simulation, the smell of blood and smoke making him choke) and pushes it open, his sneakers squeaking the same way his yellow boots once had on the tiled floor.  
  
La’gaan is standing there, just under the statue of Aquaman, his arms folded. When Wally approaches him, he turns his head, his scarlet eyes unblinking, before breaking into a grin.  
  
“Hey there, chum!” he exclaims, clapping Wally on the shoulder with enthusiastic force that reminds him of Captain Marvel (and he’ll never know, never, how the stoic Kaldur comes from the same place as this boisterous jokester). “Good to see you thriving!”  
  
“Uh, sure, that’s one word for it,” Wally mumbles, with a half-smile. “Good to see you too, La’gaan.”  
  
“You waiting on Nightwing?” La’gaan asks. “Because he’s been in there for  _ages_ ; I’m just sitting tight for my angelfish—”  
  
“Nah,” Wally replies, and La’gaan quiets. “Waiting on Impulse.”  
  
La’gaan nods slowly, his finned arms going akimbo.  
  
“Ah,” he says, and nothing more.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Bart doesn’t hug Jaime good-bye. He’s been teaching himself to hold back.  
  
Jaime grasps his shoulder with gratitude he either can’t or won’t articulate, and looks him in the eye, and it’s enough of a hug for Bart, honestly. Jaime’s grandmother wraps her arm around Jaime’s torso and leads him down the hallway to take him home, and Bart’s insides sort of wriggle unpleasantly as he watches everyone’s families arrive to embrace them and love them and welcome them and he goes to sit through a debriefing with Nightwing alone.  
  
He can’t help staring at M’gann while he talks, at the blank way she gazes at the floor, at the way Garfield won’t let go of her hand. Nightwing doesn’t seem to care, and that urge to hug comes back again when he mentions Aqualad and M’gann lets out a quiet little sob, but he reigns it in, and Nightwing pats him on the back and smiles gently and says “good job” and Bart has never left a room so quickly in his life.  
  
He sort of half-stumbles down the hallway to the main entrance room, his feet thudding into each other, his stomach snarling with hunger. His ears are ringing a little, and his joints are aching, but he shakes his head once and the disorientation flies out. He pulls the visor off of his face with a sigh and mentally calculates the possible costs of snacking up before running back to Central City.  
  
He rounds the corner and the gold statues loom ahead of him, grand and inspiring and nothing like the crumbled bits of stone he’d seen as a child. His heart thuds painfully and he wishes it would quiet down.  
  
The room is empty. There is no one there for him, and he doesn’t know why he’s so disappointed, because no one has ever been there for him, all of their bits turned to black ash and wind, all their faces gone gray and still. His eyes feel hot, so he wipes at them, but they leave wet streaks on through the dirt on his gloves.  
  
Parts of his skin are still burning from the way the electricity in the Reach’s pods had torn at them. He gulps, but it catches in his throat, lumpy and hard, and he almost throws up.  
  
His eyes stray dazedly through the room before locking in on something. A red jacket, and red hair, and two hands coming out of their pockets, dwarfed significantly by the golden statue of the Flash.  
  
Bart’s breath hitches and it comes out as a hiccup that echoes. Wally West steps into the dim streak of light from the moon outside and Bart tries not to think of him standing in front of Blue Beetle with a defiant glint in his eye, tries not to think of the sound of his neck breaking, tries not to think of Artemis crying.  
  
He tries his absolute best.  
  
Wally walks to him and halts just in front of him, hunkering down onto one knee until their eyes are practically level. Bart has never felt so small, not even on his knees in the ash.  
  
Wally looks him in the eye, grassy green uncertainty, and Bart swallows something down. He pulls a hesitant smile onto his face and opens his mouth to let out some dismissive remark, ready for whatever griping Wally’s about to toss at him, but suddenly Wally’s arms have shot out and Bart is being yanked into the tightest hug of his life.  
  
It knocks the breath out of him. Bart’s used to hugging people, flinging embraces left and right like it’s his job to distribute them, cherishing the contact he’d only had once or twice as a child, the contact Wally (with gray in his hair) had taught him how to use. But now it’s being bestowed on him, and he hadn’t even asked for it, hadn’t even initiated it, and he doesn’t know what to do except stand there, his chin bumping against Wally’s inner shoulder.  
  
Wally pulls him closer and Bart finally has the good sense to do what he likes, and that’s to clumsily wrap his weary arms around Wally’s shoulders, to bury his face in the fabric of Wally’s jacket until the wrinkles brand themselves onto his eyelids in red lines.  
  
“Hey, buddy,” Wally manages to get out through the holding, through Bart’s crying (when had he started crying?). “Jeez. Didn’t they ever teach you not to get kidnapped in the future?”  
  
“They may’ve—” Bart sniffles, loudly, wetly. “Skipped over that bit.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Wally laughs, squeezing him, just for a second, before pulling away, his hands still resting on Bart’s shoulders (and he doesn’t even realize, Bart thinks, that he’s holding him steady). “I might have to file a complaint. If that doesn’t crash the timestream, in a bad way.”  
  
Bart blinks at him through swimming eyes, chewing his lip, and he’s never felt more like a kid, sore and still scared, waiting for the instant when something will explode somewhere and he’ll lose everything that helped him learn to smile again.  
  
Wally’s face softens and releases Bart’s shoulders, his hands dropping to rest on his raised knee. “I’m glad you’re okay, Bart. Don’t quote me on that, but... I am.”  
  
Bart’s lower lip quivers and he falls forward to embrace Wally on his own terms, clutching him as tightly as he can even through his taut muscles, and Wally lets out a noticeable “ _oof_ ” at the impact.  
  
“Okay, let’s not overdo it,” he ekes out, but he doesn’t pry Bart away like he’s done so many times before. “Jay and Joan slept through the phone, so – you wanna come stay at our— _my_  place for the night?”  
  
Bart nods profusely against Wally’s jacket and Wally pats the back of his head awkwardly.  
  
“Gets pretty lonely there, even with the dog,” he jokes halfheartedly. “Plus eating pancakes loses the appeal when you’re doing it alone.”  
  
“Thanks,” Bart croaks, and Wally sighs in obviously forced exasperation, his shoulders slumping.  
  
“Family’s family,” he says, and that’s what finally gets Bart to stop crying.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Your place smells like Christmas,” Bart comments dismissively in the morning through a mouth full of pancakes, looking eerily at home in Wally’s old Keystone High shirt and Batman pajama pants.  
  
Wally halts, just for a moment, his fork poised halfway toward the plate. Bart doesn’t take notice, still shoveling down his breakfast with enthusiasm.  
  
“I like it,” Bart adds.  
  
Wally shifts into movement again, his eyelids lowering pensively.  
  
“Me too,” he says after a while.  
  
Bart beams at him. They race to the coastline and Wally tells him about tidepools and sunsets and clam chowder and suddenly, ash seems like such an insignificant thing for Bart to think about when he has the sky. 

**Author's Note:**

> I successfully combined both of your prompts, you crafty cat. I FREAKING WIN. Because I am THE ULTIMATE WIZARD.


End file.
